Hazel and Glenn Andersen of Arbon in the war years, 1942–1945

Ten weeks apart, in November 1942 and January 1943, two children of John C. and DeSena Andersen, homesteaders at the head of Bannock Creek in Arbon, Power County, Idaho, were married in Utah temples. The papers that reported the two weddings, and the Cache Valley columns that followed one of the couples through the war, give a glimpse of an Arbon family in wartime.

John and DeSena had seven children, as told in their family history. Hazel, born in 1917, and Glenn, born in 1920, were the fifth and sixth. From the mid-1930s the family spent its winters in American Falls so the younger children could go to high school, and Glenn graduated from American Falls High School. The papers spell the name both Anderson and Andersen, and Glenn sometimes as Glen. They are the same family.

A wedding in Spanish costume

According to the family timeline on this site, Hazel left in November 1940 to serve in the Spanish-American Mission of the Latter-day Saint church. By the autumn of 1942 she was home. At noon on Tuesday, November 3, 1942, she married Rex Terry in the St. George Temple. The Washington County News of St. George called her the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. J. C. Anderson of Arbon, Idaho. President Harold S. Snow performed the ceremony before a small group of relatives and friends. The groom was the son of Mrs. Bessie Terry of St. George and a graduate of the Dixie junior college. He too had recently come home from two years in the Spanish-American Mission.

The next evening Mrs. Terry, probably the groom's mother, gave an informal reception for the couple in the South ward chapel. The paper said the couple wore "the gay costumes of Spanish bride and groom." The evening went to singing and dancing, and the numbers included "vocal duets in Spanish by the bride and groom." Hazel's parents and her youngest brother, Norman, had come to St. George with her. The newlyweds planned to stay several days, the paper said, "pending his acceptance for military service in which he is enlisting." None of the papers read for this post says whether or where Rex Terry served.

A year later Hazel was still described as of Arbon. A ward column in Logan's Cache American of December 3, 1943, listed Mrs. Hazel Anderson Terry of Arbon, Idaho, among the speakers at a Sunday evening sacrament meeting. She was visiting at the home of Miss Julia Griffin, another speaker that evening. The column explained that the two women had been companions in the Spanish-American Mission.

Lieutenant Andersen

In January 1943 Glenn was a senior at the Utah State Agricultural College in Logan, now Utah State University. On Wednesday, January 13, he married Roma Erickson, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. William Erickson of Smithfield, in the Logan Temple, with President Joseph Quinney officiating. A wedding dinner for both families followed at her parents' home. The Logan Herald Journal and the North Cache News called the groom Lieutenant Andersen, but that was a college rank: he was "a first lieutenant in the advanced ROTC." He belonged to Scabbard and Blade and, by these two papers' account, to the American Society of Agricultural Engineers. The Deseret News, in its engagement notice and its wedding report, named the American Society of Civil Engineers instead. Roma had also studied at the college. The couple planned to live in Logan while he finished his studies.

His officer's commission came later in 1943. A notice for the couple's fiftieth anniversary, printed in 1992, says he graduated that year and went to Officer Candidate School in the Army Air Force at Miami Beach, Florida, where he was commissioned. In early December 1943 the Herald Journal reported Lieutenant Glen Anderson on leave from army duty at Miami. With his parents he visited relatives in Mendon, the Cache Valley town where his father was born. They dined with his aunt, Mrs. Catherine Gibbons, and saw his uncle, Magnus Andersen.

By January 1944 he was stationed with the air corps at Amarillo, Texas. On January 14 the Herald Journal reported that he had flown in from Amarillo and was the new father of a daughter, born on Monday, January 10, at the Budge hospital in Logan. The item added that he had "recently received his air corps commission in Florida."

The Herald Journal noticed the couple twice more while he was in uniform. In October 1944 Lieutenant and Mrs. Glen Anderson of Amarillo were spending their leave with his parents at Arbon. In October 1945 Mrs. Gibbons gave a dinner in Mendon for First Lieutenant and Mrs. Glen Anderson of Amarillo, and John and DeSena were among the guests. According to the 1992 notice, Glenn served at Amarillo until December 1945.

Roma's obituary of 2003 adds wartime work of her own. During the war, it says, she "blew glass making radio tubes in Salt Lake City." It does not say in which years.

Home to Arbon

After his discharge, the 1992 notice says, Glenn and Roma moved to Arbon, where he farmed until 1950. Cache Valley items in the Herald Journal bear this out. In May 1948 Mr. and Mrs. Glen Anderson and their daughter, of Arbon, visited Roma's parents, Mr. and Mrs. William Erickson. In March 1950 the couple and their two children went back to their home in Arbon. John and DeSena had given up farming and moved to Pocatello in 1946, by the account printed for their golden wedding in 1956 (John's obituary says 1940). The Andersen family timeline adds that the 1950 census found Glenn farming at Arbon with his brother Norman.

The couple then moved to Smithfield so Glenn could finish an engineering degree, which he completed in 1952. He worked for the U.S. Geological Survey at Logan and, from 1975, at Vernal, and retired in 1985. He died in 2000 and Roma in 2003. Hazel and Rex Terry made their home in Las Vegas by 1956. In July 1972 the Cache Citizen reported them leaving for two days to visit "their old home in Arbon" and her brother Mark.

The story as reported

Washington County News, November 5, 1942, page 4. The original article is under copyright; this is our own report of what it said.

ST. GEORGE, Utah — Rex Terry of St. George and Hazel Anderson of Arbon, Idaho, two missionaries lately back from the Spanish-American Mission, became husband and wife at noon on Tuesday, November 3, 1942, in a ceremony at the St. George Temple.

Mr. and Mrs. J. C. Anderson of Arbon were the bride's parents. Rex, whose mother was Mrs. Bessie Terry of St. George, had earned his diploma at the Dixie junior college. His mission lasted two years, and Hazel had come back from the same field only a short time earlier.

President Harold S. Snow conducted the rites. The wedding was kept small, with just a handful of family members and friends looking on.

Hazel's parents and her brother Norman made the trip from Idaho with her for the wedding. They planned to stay in St. George through the week.

A much larger crowd turned out the following evening, Wednesday, when Mrs. Terry held an informal reception for the newlyweds in the South ward chapel. The pair came dressed in Spanish wedding costume.

Guests spent the evening singing and dancing. Dance music came from the Foster D.U.P. orchestra, made up of Mrs. James Chadburn, Mrs. Emma Hemenway and Mrs. Sam Fullerton. The bride and groom sang duets together in Spanish. Clark Chadburn played piano solos, Vernon Worthen sang solos, and Willard Terry and Evan Cooper sang duets to guitar accompaniment.

The couple expected to spend a few more days in St. George. Rex had applied to enlist and was waiting to hear whether the armed forces would take him.

On this site: John C. and DeSena Andersen, and the Andersen family overview with its timeline of the family's years in the valley.

Hazel and Glenn Andersen of Arbon in the war years, 1942–1945

A wedding in Spanish costume

Lieutenant Andersen

Home to Arbon

The story as reported

Sources

Connected histories

Andrew & Sophia Andersen